There's the windup, there's the pitch, and there's Amy by herself in the front row behind home plate at Miller Park at most home games. That's her right above the dot-com in the Brewers ad to the left of the umpire.

She says she loves the Brewers and swears she never set out to be noticed. Men being what we are, it just happened. Sports radio started talking about this striking brunet last season, and then sports website Deadspin wrote about her.

"After that, things kind of went crazy," she said.

Front Row Amy was born. Now she has a Facebook page with that name that has more than 12,000 fans, and another 8,000 followers chat with her on Twitter @BrewerGirl823.

Last month, a guy dressed like Amy with a black wig, stuffed-in breasts and cleavage lines painted on his chest sat in her seat at one of the games she skipped. That spawned his own Front Row Andy page on Facebook.

"I thought that was funny," Amy said. She eventually met Andy and posed for a photo with him.

It's surprising, to me at least, to learn this sudden celebrity is a wife and mother of three - a son, 12, and daughters, 9 and 7 - and that she drives to and from each game from her home in Oshkosh, where she works with her husband of 18 years, Russ, in a property management business.

"He is so supportive and so nice. He takes care of the kids when I come to the games," she said.

Amy never cared about baseball until she discovered the Brewers during the 2007 season. She found that going to games made her feel like she was part of something big, and she learned that she enjoyed it most when she went alone.

"It was like an escape. I could sit here and keep score and not have to talk to anybody. I could get absorbed in the game," she said.

My interview with Amy at her primo seat before Monday's game was interrupted repeatedly by guys wanting their picture taken with her. Dressed in Daisy Duke shorts and an off-the-shoulders white top, she happily posed with each one, including half a dozen members of the state champion Sun Prairie Cardinals high school baseball team. They were honored near home plate before the game, and then they headed right for Amy.

Never mind that she's old enough to be their mother. In TV land, the camera in center field that shows each pitch softens her 43 years and bathes Amy in deep-tan hotness that obviously works even on teenage boys, not to mention middle-age guys I know who can't stop talking about her.

"Men are men. They are attracted to the looks thing," Amy said when I asked if she's flirting with us via mass media. "But a lot of people are fans of me because they can see how much I love baseball."

How can they see that? First of all, Amy scores the game. She notes every pitch, every hit, every out, every run in her official scorebook. You can see her doing that on TV. It's so geeky, it's sexy.

She favors the Reisner scorekeeping system, which I never heard of until she told me how awesome it is. On Monday she was using the 2-inch stub of what she called her lucky pencil. Given the kind of year the Brewers are having, she might want to break in a new one.

My brother-in-law told me he was pretty sure she never takes a bathroom break. He turned out to be right about that. Amy said she stays at her seat the entire game, for fear that she will miss a pitch or two on a restroom trip. She drinks only water and has nothing to eat.

Even in a blowout, she never leaves the game early. She claps a lot and yells encouragement to the players and sometimes derision at the umpire. If her presence can distract an opposing pitcher, so be it, she says.

This is the second year Amy has owned this single seat for the entire 81-game home season (a $5,670 expense). She doesn't know most of the people sitting around her and rarely interacts with them. She's not at the game to chat. Her focus is on the field.

She plans to attend about 50 games this season and sell the tickets to the rest on StubHub and eBay. She sat in the same section, 117, for the 2009 and 2010 seasons, but in the fourth row. Fourth Row Amy doesn't have quite the same buzz.

She has met some Brewers players but doesn't party with them or know them well. Her favorite at the moment is Corey Hart. She also likes Zack Greinke and would love to see the Brewers hang on to him. From Row 1, Seat 5, she can appreciate how a guy like that can make a ball curve so beautifully.

The Brewers organization is well aware of her but has not orchestrated her rise to popularity. As far as I can tell, Amy is not a Go Daddy girl or any other corporate creation, though she has gone on sports radio and made some celebrity appearances. She also has obliged the fans who wanted a few swimsuit shots of her posted online.

"I work out. I don't mind wearing a bikini," she said. "I haven't made any money off this or anything. People just know who I am."

She enjoys the attention and does her best to ignore the criticism from Internet haters who are only too happy to tear down her looks or call her a bad mother. They don't know anything about her, she says.

Teddy Kervin, who attends Brewers games dressed as the "Rally Banana," calls Amy a true fan.